Complaining about AI art programs is like complaining about Photoshop or whining about digital tablets. Both of those likely put artists out of business because the market could be served by fewer artists making works at a faster rate.
You know, I was just thinking recently that when I was a kid comic books had a penciler, an inker, and a colorist. How many of those jobs still exist now that everything is drawn on computer programs?
The amount of jobs shrank for sure, but a lot of that is due to corporate drivel/woke.
I follow a lot of indie comic creators, most (at least the ones that turn out good product) are still specialized. Pencils/inks seem to be the most combined. Inkers and letterers probably lost the most jobs. Pencils/layouts/inks get combined into one artist more and more these days.
Colors often get sent to Philippines or South America for 'flats / flatting' cheap rates separating / selecting all of the components and layers, and laying down flat colors. Then those flats are sent back to a top tier colorist who adds in all of the gradients, detailed edgework, effects.
Letterers still have their place, but because of digital/scans, one letterer is doing a lot more projects than a traditional letterer would have in the non-digital age.
Books that use a standard font, get called out as cheap. Buyers still like hand letters or custom fonts from a pro letterer the most. Letterers also often do the onomatopoeia / sound effects as words, but a lot of pros build those into their actual layouts and pencils/inks.
A lot of the old pros / big names still do traditional paper pages. Most can do digital, but the reason they keep doing traditional, is you can sell them for a good chunk of money after the book is printed. So they get the page rate from whomever, (or self-published) and then sell the physical page (black and white, colors are almost always digital now) double-dipping.
You know, I was just thinking recently that when I was a kid comic books had a penciler, an inker, and a colorist. How many of those jobs still exist now that everything is drawn on computer programs?
The amount of jobs shrank for sure, but a lot of that is due to corporate drivel/woke.
I follow a lot of indie comic creators, most (at least the ones that turn out good product) are still specialized. Pencils/inks seem to be the most combined. Inkers and letterers probably lost the most jobs. Pencils/layouts/inks get combined into one artist more and more these days.
Colors often get sent to Philippines or South America for 'flats / flatting' cheap rates separating / selecting all of the components and layers, and laying down flat colors. Then those flats are sent back to a top tier colorist who adds in all of the gradients, detailed edgework, effects.
Letterers still have their place, but because of digital/scans, one letterer is doing a lot more projects than a traditional letterer would have in the non-digital age.
Books that use a standard font, get called out as cheap. Buyers still like hand letters or custom fonts from a pro letterer the most. Letterers also often do the onomatopoeia / sound effects as words, but a lot of pros build those into their actual layouts and pencils/inks.
A lot of the old pros / big names still do traditional paper pages. Most can do digital, but the reason they keep doing traditional, is you can sell them for a good chunk of money after the book is printed. So they get the page rate from whomever, (or self-published) and then sell the physical page (black and white, colors are almost always digital now) double-dipping.
Interesting- I would have guessed it was all one dude with a computer. Seems pretty complicated.